Best approach is to NEVER grab 'updates' to a Graphic Driver until AFTER others have crashed and burned...and the issues are resolved.

This is my first high end graphics card. NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960. It was a gift and I'm still on the learning curve, trying to take care of it and do the right thing and all. Yo're right, though. Live and learn. I saw a few dozen posts in reddit from guys that usually follow what you laid out but chose not to this 'one' time and wham! I'll wait, from now on.

here's the weird thing about win10 driver updates.. it's somewhat random as to what it updates. i mean, it has not updated my nvidia drivers yet since nov (i get them direct from nvidia from time to time).. and certainly didn't update realtek sound drivers, even though there are far newer ones in ms catalogue.

in fact, i'm not even sure what driver updates it's ever performed (for some reason the reliability report thing cuts off from last month, even though os was installed in nov.) though i know it updated something before.

and there's no good reason to get geforce experience. much like there was no good experience to get the amd equivalent (i had that in my previous machinefor a bit and it didn't do anything useful at all.)

ps.. some people still have issues with the 364.51, so might as well go back to the previous ones if you are going to try stuff.

This wasn't a forced update issue, it was just a screwed up driver update issue

Yup.

One of the guys I game with who builds his own rigs scolded me. Said he had the same drivers from Nov. 2015. He told me to wait and see who crashes and burns first and let the update be patched/fixed and then download it.

I'm just anal about keeping everything updated. I guess I need to take a step back and rethink some of my practices when it comes to updates. This one was just out, Game Ready sent me a notification, and the option was all mine as to whether or not I downloaded it. I'm like a little kid with this graphics card. I really love how good it is and it's changed gaming for me as well as any thing where a good card can really be appreciated. I need to chill and follow the good advice I am being given.